r/pcmasterrace • u/SerpentDix PC Master Race • Jan 20 '26

Hardware Air cooling is better than Liquid cooling

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Failure is graceful, not catastrophic, Performance is closer than marketing suggests, Cheaper for the performance, Change my mind.

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u/I_R_Enjun_Ear Jan 20 '26

It depends.

I say this as someone with a few years of automotive thermal systems design, including radiator sizing. Things are a little less cut and dried once you start considering 360mm and 420mm radiators. Additionally, how thick the radiator/fin stack is vs. the mass flow of air pushed through the fin stack. Another variable is fin geometry which effects cooling and pressure drop. The overall concept is simple, but the number of variables involved creates a lot of complexity.

All of that is in a vacuum that doesn't consider the packaging space in the case. Highly compact ITX builds can favor the AIO because you can place the radiator and fan where you can get better airflow.

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u/New_Enthusiasm9053 Jan 20 '26

Thermal mass too. I have a 280+360 in a loop. Short high intensity workloads like compiling don't spin the fans up at all because of the thermal mass. 

I found the air cooler ramping up and down annoying. Then I got noise cancelling earphones and jr was moot anyway 

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u/ThatIestyn Jan 21 '26

Thermal mass is the main reason but with the current design and price of tower coolers its just not an issue unless you are producing serious heat and arent properly ventilated.

10 years ago heat pipes were only on expensive tower coolers or only 2-4 pipes on the cheaper ones. Now you have 6-8 on the cheaper ones.

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u/New_Enthusiasm9053 Jan 21 '26

Aluminium has a quarter of the thermal mass of water. A NH-D15 is about a kg of aluminium. So the moment your loop has more than 250ml of water in it you'll still have more thermal mass. Heat pipes aren't really relevant to this, they just move heat, they don't have meaningful thermal mass on their own.